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Description
[ECS/Fargate] [Feature Request]: Task-Level Cost Forecasting in Console
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Tell us about your request
I’d like AWS to add a task-level cost forecasting feature to the ECS/Fargate Console. This feature would estimate the hourly, per-minute, or per-second cost for any ECS/Fargate task configuration and allow users to forecast monthly costs based on the number of tasks or service replicas.
Which service(s) is this request for?
ECS, Fargate, potentially Pricing APIs.
Tell us about the problem you're trying to solve. What are you trying to do, and why is it hard?
I work extensively with ECS and Fargate, and I constantly find myself jumping back and forth between the ECS Console, AWS Pricing Calculator, and my own spreadsheets to figure out how much a task or service might cost.
Whenever I’m designing a new workload or trying to optimize costs, I have to:
- Manually look up pricing for the region
- Calculate CPU and memory charges
- Estimate how long tasks might run
- Multiply it all out for the number of replicas or task runs
It’s not only time-consuming—it’s stressful because I’m never completely sure I’ve captured all the details correctly. I’ve sometimes underestimated costs and been surprised by higher bills, especially when scaling services up or trying new instance sizes like Graviton.
I know I’m not alone—many developers and FinOps teams face this problem. There’s no built-in way to connect my ECS task definitions directly to pricing estimates. This makes it hard to:
- Budget new workloads
- Compare different architectures (e.g. x86 vs Graviton)
- Plan scaling changes
- Forecast the financial impact of changes
Without this, developers either over-provision out of caution or under-budget and run into surprises later.
Are you currently working around this issue?
Yes, I currently:
- Use the AWS Pricing Calculator separately
- Keep my own spreadsheets of cost formulas
- Perform manual calculations every time I tweak task definitions
These methods are error-prone and disconnected from the ECS Console experience. It’s easy to forget details like different regional pricing or slight changes in resource allocations.
Additional context
A cost forecasting tool could:
- Display per-task cost while configuring task definitions
- Allow “what-if” modeling for different CPU/memory sizes
- Show monthly cost estimates based on desired scale
- Compare x86 vs Graviton pricing
- Help drive FinOps best practices directly in the ECS Console
This feature would save countless hours for developers and cloud architects, improve cost visibility, and help avoid surprise bills. It would encourage smarter architecture decisions right from the console, without needing to leave the ECS workflow.
Attachments
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